Ellis - The Measure of My Powers: A Memoir of Food, Misery, and Paris

PREFACE

When I was first asked to write a memoir, I declined immediately. I was scared. Though, I was not afraid to recount my experiences in a Parisian pastry school, or of the opening of Beaucoup Bakery & Caf, The Paris Tours, or even of how I became a writer. Over coffee, interviews, speeches, and articles, I shared these stories proudly.

I could easily tell the happier, abbreviated versions of my memories, the ones with easy endings, because I assumed no one would be interested in the others. I was concerned about making others feel awkward if I was more candid. These struggles were painful to live and I presumed they were just as uncomfortable to hearsometimes seeing anothers vulnerability accentuates our own. Truthfully, I was worried about what others might think of me. I wanted so desperately to be special, but I imagined they would see my flaws and weaknesses and think that I was unremarkable, and at the time, sometimes even now, a childish part of me was afraid of being judged.

So instead, I offered an excuse: my story is not yet done. But deep down inside, I knew I wanted to write it, and in reality our stories are rarely finished anyway.

I spent years skipping over the painful parts until I realized that, in those moments when I was telling my story, it was I who wasnt ready to remember these harder moments in such detail. I had carefully put those darker memories away in a sturdy box and placed it in the back of a closet. It was a way to protect myself from the immense hurt that, at one time, I was drowning in, day after day. And I tried to forget these stories existed, ignoring them for as long as I could, tiptoeing around them, careful not to kick up their terrible dust.

After a few years passed, some of the hurt had healed, and I felt strong enough to peek inside the box again. I looked at the painful parts and grew to appreciate that my strength was found in the moments when I felt weakest, and that they were both beautifully and crucially intertwined. I began to understand that by refusing to write this memoir, I was only trying to avoid vulnerability. That was, frankly, not a good enough reason for me. So, knowing I was braver than my fears, I began to write, and when I did, I naturally thought of M. F. K. Fisher.

As I reread her books, I found myself once again in the pains and joys of her narratives. I was drawn again into her stories of Sunday picnics by swimming holes, eating peach pie with her silent father; of prewar France, warming segments of clementine on radiators while watching soldiers soldier on the streets below her bedroom window. I found myself laughing, amused by her sharp sense of humorshe titled one of her chapters Pity the Blind in Palate. I was taken by the way she placed modest words beside one another to create images, tastes, and smells so whole that I could have sworn the memories were my own.

When I first read her stories, those many years ago during the emptiest time in my life, Fishers work led me, page by page, into her world, and the stories were my connection to the living. They held onto me, like a thick rope tight around my wrist as I hovered in the depths of depression. They pulled me to food, into the kitchen to bake, cook, console, feed, feast, and connect back to who I was.

It was then, in that hungry and confused place, that I read this quote from George Santayana: To be happy you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world. And when I began this book, less hungry, having tasted passions and discovered places in the world where I felt at home, I reread this same quote and knew these words were also mine.

M. F. K. Fishers book The Gastronomical Me titles eleven of its twenty-six chapters The Measure of My Powers, and I chose that as the title of my book, as an ode to her and how her words have fed me.

And like many of hers, my book is a collection of memories. Ive written them as vignettes, short or long stories strung together with food. They are at times playful, at others painful, and like memories, they are sometimes seemingly unrelated and random. Though this is just the way we remember: while doing something mundane, like brushing our teeth or during our commute, non-sequential memories surface, at times taking us by surprise. But the memories we do keep form who we are when all put together like a puzzle, regardless of how unimportant and vague each one seems alone.

It was through writing that I was placed again in the depths of those moments I had tried so hard to forget. I found some parts flowed easily, but at other points I was obstinate, refusing to move until I gave myself the space to remember, to let go, to forgive others and myself before I could tell the story with any amount of clarity and grace. And with each chapter, I celebrated again my triumphs, relived my passions, and said goodbye once more. Slowly, word by word, my story and I were made whole again. In the end, I found that writing this book was more helpful to me than it could ever be to anyone else.

Even so, I share my stories, as honestly as I remember them, in the hopes that someone might read it on a day when it might be particularly helpful. Or that perhaps those who recognize my darkest moments may also find themselves in my triumphs, and be fed until their hungers are satisfied.

JKE

A NOTE ON THE NAMES AND CONVERSATIONS IN THIS BOOK

I purposely chose not to share names, using only a single letter instead, for many people in this book, particularly for my former husband, G. The reason is that this story is mine and not theirs. The conversations and details are as accurate as I remember them, but as we all know, memories evolve and grow as we do, blue turns teal, and I know that for my entire future, I will only see richer facets of the past.

Lao-Tzu

THESE WERE THE TWO MOMENTS IN MY DAY I DREADED no, I think feared is a better wordmost: the moment just before sleep and the precise moment I woke up. The unnerving silence of those times. There were no busy sounds to distract me, and nothing to occupy my mind. They were the moments I would be forced to face my own tangled and disfigured mind, even though I wanted desperately to look away.